


The Witch-Queen

by mirogeorgiev97



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work
Genre: Character Death, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dreams and Nightmares, Evil Queen - Freeform, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Gen, Kings & Queens, Madness, Moral Lessons, Morality, Murder, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Sleep, Witchcraft, Witches, fable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 03:10:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirogeorgiev97/pseuds/mirogeorgiev97





	The Witch-Queen

Long ago, in a distant land, there once lived a most beautiful queen. Throughout the whole kingdom, it was said that she was as fair of heart as she was of face, and she was beloved by all her subjects.

But deep within her heart, where none could see, the lovely queen harbored seething jealousy of the women of her land; for any one of them could grow to be fairer than she. This, she could not allow to pass, so the queen decided to make the women of the land suffer.

Now, what no one, not even the king, knew about the queen was that she was also a witch, whose skills in the dark arts were matched only by the dark gods who gifted them unto her. With this great and terrible power in her hands, the fair-faced queen brought three disasters to pass on the women of her kingdom.

The first, she called the “veil of fear”: Every night, as the kingdom slept, the women of the land would be visited by ghastly nightmares.

One night, the women would speak of swarms of spiders descending from the rafters to eat them and their families. The next night, it would be an invasion of giant, wolf-like beasts with claws so sharp they could cut through steel and jaws so strong they could break bone. Another night, the sea, the rivers, and the lakes would all flow red and turn to blood, spreading across the forests and the fields to flood the whole world.

For ten years, the women of the land so dreamt, heavy bags forming under their eyes, until, one day, they simply ceased. The women of the land rejoiced.

“No more nightmares!” they cheered, unaware that, at that moment, a new veil had enshrouded their minds.

This new disaster was called the “veil of tears”: Whereas, before, the women could only dream of horrors, this time, the women were robbed of all their dreams. Only darkness remained to accompany them in their sleep.

The first night was the most restful the stricken women had since the nightmares ended, but, by a year’s passing, they would be delirious from lack of sleep. Their inability to dream robbed the women of sleep itself! How could they bear to sleep when every time they closed their eyes, all they could see was the inky blackness of the Void? How could they hope or strive without dreams?

But the vain witch-queen was not done tormenting her country’s poor women; for, throughout the years of the veil of fear and veil of tears, she was busy concocting a potion to unleash the worst of her disasters upon the minds of women.

After eleven years of painstaking work, the witch-queen produced a liquid of shining darkness, black as the Void, yet more lustrous than gold or silver. She had made enough of the substance to drip exactly one drop for every well, pool, and pond, every stream, river, and lake that could be found in the kingdom.

The witch-queen relieved the women of the land of their dreamless sleep. For the first time in so long, the sunken-eyed, stooping women rested. But, when the morning rose, and the women had drunk from their wells or laundered by the river or took their sheep across the streams, the vain witch-queen’s potion ensnared their minds in the “veil of woe,” bringing them to madness and murder.

That morning, what sounded like the din of battle awoke the witch-queen. All the women of the land made weapons of spindles and knives, stabbing anyone and everyone with no rhyme or reason. She rose from her bed and looked out at the courtyard of her castle, the better to see the bloodbath unfold before her. The potion was working exactly as intended.

At first, the witch-queen smiled; with their eyes sunken, their shoulders stooped, and their dresses covered in blood, certainly no woman in the whole kingdom could ever be fairer than she. But, as the killing continued, her countenance fell.

As more people lay dying, she fled to her chamber, where she was greeted by a most gruesome sight: Her husband lay dead, murdered by the castle maidservants, whose own corpses surrounded his, having turned their knives on each other after they had finished him off.

Horrified at what her creation had done, the witch-queen fled the castle, narrowly escaping the many knives of her country’s mad women. Eventually, she discovered an old tower on a hill overlooking a grey plain, and, there, she decided to take up residence.

Many years passed, and the once-beautiful witch-queen had long ago grown as old and grey as the plains themselves.

She lived off the land much as the women of her old kingdom once did, growing her own food and sewing her own clothes, creating an island of green surrounded by a sea of grey. But never once did the witch smile at the fruits of her labor; for she could only ever think about what evils her hands had wrought all those years ago.

One day, the former queen had climbed into the tallest room in the old tower where she made her bed. There, she knelt before the window and stretched her arms out to the sky. The witch thought long and hard about all she had done, and she slowly realized why her heart weighed so heavily: Long ago, she was the fairest of all queens, but, in an effort to protect her fairness, she destroyed everything and everyone, even the man she loved.

What was her beauty, in the end, if the vanity it had brought had turned her into a monster? Rather than longing to keep a fair face, she should have longed to keep a fair heart.

The old witch, as powerful as she once was, could not return the dead to life; she could not rebuild the kingdom, or even bring back her husband. She could not undo the damage that she had wrought upon the land. She could only sit and behold the consequences of her pride.

And, so, the witch who was once a queen chose to stay within that small room, sitting before that small window overlooking the gray plains. Even as death approached her, she remained seated in that place, before she reached out her hand to the window.

“I come to join you, my people,” she said.

Upon these words, she died, and her body turned to dust.

Soon after, the old tower crumbled to the earth below, destroying the one patch of green in a sea of grey.

 

The End.


End file.
